Grand Entertainment
by Libek
Summary: Towards the end of the series, but before a certain Mai-and-Ty-Lee-relevant episode. The dangerous ladies aren't doing so well, but Ty Lee has -- maybe -- sort of -- an idea. Femslash.


In the circus, you really had to know how to read people and situations. If you misjudged a cartwheel on the tightrope, if your trapeze partner wasn't ready to catch you, you'd fall, and most of the people in the audience hadn't paid to see you fall, so they'd feel cheated, and soon no one would _ever_ come to watch you perform. Working there, Ty Lee had learned pretty quickly to be good at doing both.

So when Zuko disappeared, and Mai stopped her endless stream of complaints about everyone and everything, Ty Lee knew better than to believe (the way Azula did) that it meant the other girl had never really cared.

And when, after four days of almost total silence, Mai finally uttered a single soft, "I'm bored," Ty Lee knew better than to think (the way Azula did) that it was necessarily a _good sign_.

"There she goes again," Azula murmured, more to herself than to anyone else, but Ty Lee was close enough to hear it. The relief lurking beneath her scorn was palpable: "And here I thought she'd finally grown up a little. _Do_ something about her, won't you?"

They had grown up together; Ty Lee still wondered sometimes what had happened to her friend to make her think no one else could hear or understand the insult in those words. "Sure thing, boss," she replied cheerfully, dropping back into a handstand.

After all, arguing with Azula was pretty much always the wrong thing to do -- it wouldn't solve anything, and Mai probably _could_ have used the company.

The other girl was halfway across the room, spread out on one of Azula's nicest divans, her long body a stripe of morose color (or lack thereof) on the bright red satin. She'd been wearing her hair loose lately, as if she couldn't quite be bothered with the effort of her usual style, but it was at least both sleek and clean today; Ty Lee admired the shine from her upside-down vantage point.

"Azula says I should do something about you," she offered, lips quirking to share that little joke.

"Does she," Mai repeated tonelessly.

Nothing in her face, not even the smallest twitch around the mouth to show her _resisting_ amusement. "She wasn't very specific about what, though," Ty Lee went on happily. "I could try torture."

"You _could_."

Nope, that wasn't doing it either. Ty Lee twisted her body around, getting her feet on the floor again and bouncing upright. "I don't know if that'd cheer you up, though," she tried instead. Determined. Sometimes the audience hated you, but you couldn't stop halfway through an act -- you had to finish it, and do what you could to win them over, even if it was only a little bit. "I mean, I don't know if _anything_ would cheer you up, so maybe I'm wrong, but I'm really not the torturing type, so I'd kind of prefer something else."

"Azula didn't tell you to cheer me up."

She grinned a bit, unabashedly. "But cheering you up still counts as _something_, right?"

Silence. Slowly, the other girl lifted her eyes, and for the first time in days, there was an actual expression on her face. It looked a little like surprise, and then almost instantly that surprise changed to suspicion. "What are you after?"

The way things were right now, it wasn't an unreasonable reaction. She had every right to be surprised, every right to be suspicious.

And Ty Lee hated that. For one brief moment, she even hated Azula for doing this to them.

She forced her own grin wider, stretched it across her face like a lifeline in the water, and leaned close to brush it over the slightly ugly twist in Mai's lips.

_See,_ she thought fervently as she did so, _this is what a smile feels like._

Zuko was a liar -- Mai wasn't really beautiful -- but she would have been so pretty, if only she'd smiled a tiny bit more.

The other girl's mouth was stiff and unresponsive for a full minute, but Ty Lee stayed right where she was, not withdrawing, not bouncing back out of arm's reach, not doing anything that would let Mai even _begin_ to think she was being made fun of, or teased; nothing that would let her take this anything other than seriously. She waited until she felt the telltale movement of her friend's bottom lip, softening slowly, and then pressed her advantage, a quick warm dart of tongue.

It was only a kiss, but when it finally broke -- when Mai finally turned her head aside, at least another two minutes later -- Ty Lee felt pleasantly dizzy and they were _both_ breathing heavily.

"Why... did you do that?"

Ty Lee considered, and then placed a hand on the other girl's long leg. She murmured, "I don't know. I guess it just seemed like the thing to do."

Dangerous. Mai darted a glance in Azula's direction, quick and nervously searching, but of course Azula wasn't paying attention. All her thoughts were on the future, the new campaign, what she would next say to her father to undermine Zuko's position even further, things like that. At times like this, Ty Lee wouldn't have expected her to remember they were _alive_, let alone in the same room with her.

And while the thought of testing that obliviousness -- risking everything to go a little further on this beautiful expensive satin -- was a bit thrilling, Ty Lee doubted the other girl would _go_ for that.

She wet her lips, drew a slow breath, and then backed off -- literally, letting herself fall back off the divan and catching her weight on her hands. Upside-down again, she said cheerfully, "I don't lock my door at night, and I'm up pretty late! If you wanna talk some more, I'll be there."

Mai made a disgruntled, noncommittal noise, and turned her face away. No flush of any kind to give away her thoughts. But Ty Lee wasn't discouraged. She knew how to read people. And she knew what she saw in the subtle set of the other girl's mouth.

So when she opened her door later that night, she knew what she'd see -- a pale streak in silk night clothes, eyes lowered uncertainly and digging the fingers of one hand so tightly into her other arm that she was almost drawing blood.

Mai opened her mouth, and Ty Lee went up on her tip-toes to kiss her before she could speak. Words would only be awkward. Mai would want to tell her that this didn't mean anything -- would want to explain away the desperate need for comfort, and reassert how much she cared for Zuko. It wasn't anything Ty Lee didn't already know, and it would really ruin the mood.

_Don't apologize for this,_ she said with her lips, her tongue, the arms that curled gently around the taller girl's waist. _There's nothing to be sorry for._

There were tears in her kiss.

Kisses should never have tears in them.

And again she hated Azula, just for an instant. She hated Zuko, just for an instant.

He should have known Mai better. He should have taken her with him, or at least shared his secret with her. Hadn't he grown up with Azula, too? Didn't he realize she was just waiting for a good enough excuse to run away from all of this?

Ty Lee lapped up the tears, and then pretended not to have noticed them, because she knew it would humiliate the other girl to be so vulnerable where anyone else could see her.

And she made herself very distracting, because she was a circus performer, and it was the only thing she knew how to do.


End file.
